When Space Is Strategy, Not Spectacle

If you were asked which country launched the world’s first rocket powered by a one-piece 3D-printed engine, your mind might travel west. America, perhaps. Or Europe. Or Russia. Certainly not India. And definitely not from a university lab in Chennai, a city more synonymous with Carnatic concerts than countdowns.

But that’s exactly what happened.

In May 2024, on a narrow strip of coast near Sriharikota, India held its breath. A small rocket built by a private team, powered by a single-piece 3D-printed engine, and launched from a pad they built themselves, rose into the sky. The Prime Minister tweeted it. Newsrooms scrambled. For a moment, the country looked up. The rocket drew the eye, but what held it was the meaning behind the launch. Indian spaceflight no longer moved only through state corridors, but now through private hands driven by national purpose.

For decades, that future belonged to ISRO, a formidable state-run institution revered for doing more with less. It reached the Moon, touched Mars, and launched dozens of satellites in one go. But today, India’s space narrative isn’t singular anymore, it’s now a constellation. ISRO remains the anchor, but private companies are shaping the orbit. Over 190 startups, $460 million in venture funding, and sweeping reforms have turned the sector from monopoly to marketplace. India now aims for 8% of the global space economy by 2033.

The pivot is pragmatic. The global space economy is projected to reach $1.8 trillion by 2035. India, with just 2% of that pie today, sees enormous room to grow. In response, the government has moved decisively: allowing 100% FDI in satellite subsystems, creating a ₹1000 crore VC fund, establishing IN-SPACe to regulate private activity, and launching state-level policies that treat space tech as critical manufacturing. Spectrum is being allocated. A second spaceport is under development. And ISRO is actively transferring launch and satellite tech to private players.

But numbers alone don’t animate this story. Ideas do. Like the one that took root at IIT Madras in 2017, when an investment banker named Srinath Ravichandran teamed up with Professor S.R. Chakravarthy and Moin SPM. They asked a simple but radical question: What if rocket science didn’t have to belong to the state?

Their startup, Agnikul Cosmos, wasn’t built in the image of SpaceX or Blue Origin. It was smaller. Stranger. More surgical in ambition. Building a rocket was only part of it. The real ambition lay in collapsing the distance between idea and orbit. So they designed Agnilet: a single-piece 3D-printed engine manufactured in 72 hours. No welds. No assembly. No room for error. A precision machine that looked like sculpture and functioned like infrastructure.

Deep-tech has the impression in India that it sat in the shadows – too slow, too complex, too unfamiliar for most venture capital. Space, especially, was seen as sacrosanct. But Agnikul kept building. They simulated flights. Printed engines. Drafted plans for a launchpad. And when policy opened the door, they moved fast. With ISRO’s cooperation and IN-SPACe’s support, they built Dhanush – India’s first privately developed launchpad, just outside Sriharikota. A literal launch site, and a metaphor for what private space in India could become.

In May 2024, they used it. The Agnibaan SOrTeD flew quietly, precisely, powered by an engine that had never flown before. It was India’s first privately launched semi-cryogenic rocket. The first one-piece printed engine to reach the sky. The first time a startup had done what even ISRO hadn’t: build a rocket and its home, start to finish.

Agnikul hasn’t scaled to dozens of launches. It isn’t a unicorn. But in the slow burn of Indian aerospace, it stands as a flare, a hope that the future might be printed, not procured; built with patience, not noise.

That’s what makes India’s private space sector such a compelling inflection point – for investors,, institutions and strategists watching how nations build industrial resilience. This is India’s own model: frugal yet fearless, deeply technical yet policy-aligned, bold enough to prototype and disciplined enough to scale. In a startup ecosystem still dominated by software multiples and capital-efficient consumer platforms, Agnikul builds what few others do: proprietary hardware, dual-use infrastructure, sovereign capability.

And the execution isn’t theoretical. They do what Spacex does but at a quarter of the size and in a fiftieth of the time. Need to take 100 kilograms to orbit? With SpaceX, the next slot is two years away. With Agnikul, it’s two weeks. Traditional rocket engines take 16 weeks to build. Agnikul prints one every 72 hours. This is reprogrammable aerospace, printed at the pace of ambition.

For many Indian investors, the journey has followed a familiar arc: listed equities, real estate, global funds, a bit of tech VC on the side. Logical. Linear. But at some point, especially for those building long-term wealth, a question arises: Where is the real edge now? What lies just ahead of the curve, but still grounded in India’s direction?

That’s where space comes in. Not as science fiction, but as sovereign infrastructure. Not as hype, but as hardware. Companies like Agnikul are building capabilities that governments depend on and global markets increasingly need. The demand is real. The tech is proven. And for the first time, it’s being built in India, by Indians, for the world.

At Oister, we didn’t enter space tech through capex tables and CAGR curves. We entered it through conviction. Speciale Invest, one of India’s few early-stage deep-tech believers, backed Agnikul when it was still smoke trails and schematics. We backed Speciale because they saw what others didn’t: not just the technology, but the stamina it takes to build slow, compound hard, and launch late.

Just last week, we woke up to headlines of India’s military readiness on display – precision strikes, coordinated response, and unmistakable intent. It wasn’t just boots and border posts. It was UAVs, satellite links, encrypted feeds. Strength on the ground, matched by clarity in the sky. What didn’t make the front page were the quiet enablers like Cava Space, another Speciale company, providing critical satellite infrastructure behind the scenes. That’s how modern readiness works now: through a deep integration of defense, data, and space. Wars don’t look like they used to. And neither do the companies helping win them.

Today, Agnikul is one of the quiet jewels in that portfolio and by extension, ours. Not because it guarantees returns. But because it guarantees relevance. It forces better questions: What does resilience look like in Indian deep tech? What else have we wrongly assumed we can’t build?

This is the anti-hype cycle. The long game. Where capacity gets built long before revenue shows up. Where delays aren’t red flags, but reminders that physics still governs ambition. And where success, if it comes, will be measured not in multiples alone, but in momentum of contracts, launches, sovereign strength.

In a world chasing flash, Agnikul is patient fire. And in India’s unfolding space story, it isn’t the end goal.

It’s the door.

And thanks to Speciale and the rare privilege of backing them, we were lucky enough to be holding a key.

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